Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wednesday allowed a new Exelon spin-off company to take ownership of over a dozen current and former nuclear power plants currently owned by the utility, according to a press release. As part of Exelon’s corporate restructuring, a currently-unnamed holding company will assume control of the utility’s 17 nuclear sites, NRC said […]

Holtec International’s hopes of taking over government payouts for spent fuel storage at a Massachusetts nuclear plant under decommissioning were dashed Monday when a federal judge ruled in favor of the site’s former owner, according to a new court filing. Although Holtec currently owns Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the plant’s former owner Boston Edison is […]

New York-based NorthStar can continue participating in a public review of the Kewaunee Power Station’s sale to EnergySolutions, and the review  need not be restricted to the acquirer’s finances, according to a transcript released Tuesday. During a Nov. 3 prehearing conference held by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (WPSC), Administrative Law Judge Michael Newmark ruled […]

Fluor Idaho, which is winding down its $2.3-billion cleanup contract at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, paused a test run of the long-anticipated Integrated Waste Treatment Unit due to visible emissions coming from a stack during heat-up, a manager with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said via email Tuesday. As Fluor “started […]

A group called Oak Ridge Environmental Partners, has protested the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar remediation contract for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee awarded last month to an Amentum-Jacobs partnership. That’s according to a contract challenge dated Monday and posted to the Government Accountability Office’s website.  Debriefs were held last week on two major contracts […]

Fighting to keep its lawsuit over a proposed interim storage site alive, Texas’ attorney general said Tuesday that the Lonestar State deserves its day in federal court because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has effectively licensed a permanent nuclear repository in the state. Texas Attorney General Bill Paxton “will argue that by licensing a de facto […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is almost finished with a proof-of-concept unit that will kick off mass production of the homogenized version of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, an agency spokesperson said Monday. “The B61-12 program is nearing the completion of the FPU [first production unit] milestone, and we expect to make an announcement later […]

As expected, the Washington state attorney general has filed formal arguments saying there is no need for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit an appeals court ruling that backed a state law boosting workers’ compensation eligibility for Hanford Site employees with certain work-related illnesses. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed his 45-page “brief in opposition” […]

A three-judge panel at the New Mexico Court of Appeals has upheld a state environmental agency’s approval of the Department of Energy’s revised method for calculating underground waste volumes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The new counting method, approved as part of a state permit modification by the New Mexico Environment Department in December […]

The Department of Energy has until March or so to hammer out the details of a tax credits program for financially-troubled nuclear power plants after President Joe Biden signed a long-awaited infrastructure package into law Monday. The bipartisan bill, which opens up around $6 billion in federal funding over a five-year period to provide tax […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said COVID-19 infection rates are falling around the complex near the Georgia line. “The good news is for the first time in some time we have no one in the hospital,” Michael Budney, manager of the DOE Office of Environmental […]

With the Senate set to debate its version of the National Defense Authorization Act this week in Washington — the measure would authorize $20 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration compared with $19.7 billion requested — here’s a look at some of the defense-nuclear amendments proposed for the bill. One the Senate passes its […]

As Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff trickle back into the office, the agency said Monday that its current hybrid workplace model doesn’t yet have an expiration date. “We now are in a posture where most employees are teleworking about three days a week, and they’re in the office on varying days two days a week,” a […]

The state of New Mexico is expanding its legal campaign against spent fuel storage with a new lawsuit challenging a proposed interim storage facility in Texas, according to a press release Monday. State attorney general Hector Balderas and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) asked a judge in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was to meet this week to give the interested public an update on its plans for fully resuming antiterrorism drills at nuclear power plants, according to a meeting notice. During the meeting, to be held virtually Thursday, NRC’s security and incident response office will discuss how the agency will conduct its […]

Members of the Hanford Atomic Metals Trade Council at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state have ratified labor agreement extensions for much of the unionized workforces of four of the largest federal contractors at the nuclear cleanup site, according to a recent Facebook post by the council. “All four of the contractor’s […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico received 17 shipments of transuranic waste during October, according to figures posted on its public website. That means the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has now received 166 shipments of the defense-related waste so far this calendar year, a figure nearly identical to […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: November 14-19: SC21, supercomputing conference. America’s Center. St. Louis. In-person and virtual sessions. Agenda here. 15: Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board starts two-day meeting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time at the Holiday Inn-Beach House in Hilton […]

The Small Business Administration again ruled that incumbent Swift and Staley is too large to be the next landlord services provider at the Department of Energy’s Paducah site, kicking the matter back to a federal court and keeping the company on site at least through February 2022.  That’s according to a Friday filing in the […]

Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., on Wednesday posted net income of about $41.5 million, or $2.95 a share for the 2021 third quarter, up from a loss of $7 million or 83 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Quarterly revenue was about $91 million, up from more than $57.5 million a year ago, mostly […]

More than 90% of the workers for both the Department of Energy environmental management field office and the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, are now vaccinated against COVID-19, a federal official told a DOE advisory committee Wednesday. In addition, cleanup of radioactive contamination on a stretch of a […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is wrapping up its end of the decommissioning process at a former California nuclear power plant and deemed several locations at the site safe for unrestricted use, according to a recent letter from the agency. NRC approved three of Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) final status survey reports (FSSRs) for sections […]

As soon as next week, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should issue a draft solicitation for a Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said recently. The draft request for proposals (RFP) should show up sometime between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17, the agency’s nuclear-weapons cleanup office […]

It will be weeks or maybe even early 2022 before the Department of Energy shares more details about how it will auction off $6 billion worth of credits to struggling nuclear power plants over the next five years, a DOE official said Wednesday. “It’ll really be a little while before we have the details of […]

The Department of Energy does not expect a delay to a crucial cesium-removal demonstration at the Hanford Site’s tank farms, despite the discovery last month that parts of the system might be prone to leaks, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. The “leak-tightness” issue, as the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) called it in a […]